Prospero Lost: Prospero's Daughter, Book I (33 page)

When Mephisto and I nodded, Mab lit the candles. The three of us shook out our wrists and each rested two fingers on the planchette.

I closed my eyes, preparing. The bunk rolled beneath me as the sailboat skipped from wave to wave. The pleasant aroma of bayberry and burning wick drifted through the cabin. In the distance, a bell buoy clanged.

Opening my eyes, I asked, “Was I visited by the incubus Seir of the Shadows in my dream tonight?”

Immediately, the planchette wiggled and shot across the board to cover the “YES.”

Mab pounced on the candles, extinguishing their fires, and plunging the cabin into darkness.

“You pushed it!” came Mab’s accusing growl.

“I did not,” Mephisto objected hotly. To my eyes, he was but a faint shape in the murk. “Why would I want Miranda to believe a dopey thing like that?”

“Gentlemen!” I commanded. “Time grows short. Let’s try again.”

“You might want to make your questions simpler, Ma’am,” Mab said to me as he prepared to light the candles again. “If you had gotten a ‘No,’ you would not know if that meant ‘There was no incubus,’ or ‘The incubus was not Seir of the Shadows.’ ”

“True. However, we are short on time. A ‘Yes’ answers both questions at once. I can always ask the simpler version if we get a ‘No.’ Shall we continue?”

Mab shrugged and relit the candles. We put our fingers on the planchette again. I asked the same question. The planchette moved under my fingers, traveling rapidly to cover the “YES.”

A chill traveled down my spine. So, it had been a demon! How disturbing. And how nasty of Seir to appear as Ferdinand!

It was one thing to suspect a dream of being more than it seemed, but it was quite another to discover it was true. I felt uncomfortable, as if my most private sanctum had been invaded. I wondered what precautions could be taken to protect against future incursions. I wished I could ask Theo, but perhaps, Mab would know.

Still shaken, I moved on to the next question.

“Can Seir appear out of any shadow, anywhere?”

The planchette trembled, then began sliding across the board.

“NO.”

Mab scribbled furiously with his left hand, having put his right hand on the planchette. It took me a moment to decipher his loopy scrawl.

“Only where he is invited?”

“YES.”

Mab scribbled down two more questions. I read them in order.

“Is a vocal invitation sufficient?”

“YES.”

“Is just saying his name, without intending it to be an invocation, sufficient?”

“NO.”

Mab breathed an audible sigh of relief. I gave him a reassuring smile before I realized he probably could not see me in the near darkness. Meanwhile, Mephisto leaned over and began scribbling on the paper. Unlike Mab and me, he had put his left hand on the planchette, so he wrote with ease.

His note read: “Does line of sight act as an invitation?”

The board answered “YES.”

So, if he could see us in the distance, he could step out of a shadow beside us. Eerie and disturbing, but point to Mephisto for thinking of it.

Taking a deep breath, I asked, “Is the man who introduced himself to us as Ferdinand Di Napoli a shapechanger?”

The planchette hesitated. In the silence, my heart seemed to be thumping loudly. Was this pause a suspicious sign? Or, was it just that the name of Ferdinand Di Napoli was not as familiar to these spirits as the Three Shadowed Ones?

Eventually, it moved again. “NO.”

That was a relief! I decided to leave YES/NO questions and move on to more chancy territory.

“Where has he been the last several hundred years?” I asked.

The pause was shorter this time. Then, the planchette began moving, pausing here and there atop the handsome letters on the quaint antique board. Mab scribbled quickly, noting the pauses. The letters it hovered over spelled out:

“I-N—H-E-L-L.”

Having moved beyond YES/NO queries, I asked another question that set my heart hammering.

“Where is my father?”

The answer was the same: “I-N—H-E-L-L.”

This only confirmed what I already suspected, yet it was all I could do to
keep from exclaiming out loud. Mab’s fingers went rigid on the planchette, and Mephisto gasped. The candles flickered. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I pushed on quickly.

“Is he alive?”

“YES.”

My mouth had gone dry. I let out the breath I had not even realized I had been holding.

“How did my father come to be in Hell?”

“T-H-E—T-H-R-E-E—S-H-A-D-O-W-E-D—O-N-E-S—C-A-P-T-U-R-E-D—H-I-M—B-A-E-L-O-R—O-S-A-E—S-E-I-R.”

“Who holds him now?”

“T-O-R-T-U-R-E-R-S—F-R-O-M—T-H-E—T-O-W-E-R—O-F— P-A-I-N.”

“What was Prospero doing when he was captured?”

A pause then.

“T-H-E—S-E-C-R-E-T-S—O-F—D-R-E-A-D—P-R-O-S-P-E-R-O— A-R-E—U-N-K-N-O-W-N—T-O—U-S.”

I shifted nervously on the bunk. I had forgotten how disturbing séances were. The air hummed with tension and the feeling of unseen presences. While I found the company of Aerie Ones soothing, these lesser spirits made me distinctly uncomfortable. I began to recall why it was that I had chosen to run the business side of things and leave the actual practice of magic to Father and Erasmus.

“What is one plus one?” I asked suspiciously.

“Two.”

“Hmm.” I burned to ask: “What happened to the mind of my brother Mephisto?” and “Why does he turn into a giant black being that looks disturbingly like a demon?” However, I did not know how Mephisto would react. If he objected or cried out, the results could be deadly. Reluctantly, I postponed the investigation of those questions.

I already knew the board could not answer my most burning question: “What is needed to become a Sibyl?” In past séances, years ago, I had asked the question numerous times in a myriad of formats. The spirits moving the planchette were not privy to Eurynome’s secrets.

I returned to the subject of the Three Shadowed Ones.

“What can you tell us about Baelor of the Baleful Eye?”

“H-E—R-E-A-D-S—M-I-N-D-S.”

What are the limits on his power?”

“E-Y-E—C-O-N-T-A-C-T—O-R—T-O-U-C-H.”

As Mab scribbled down a question, I felt another chill travel down my spine. Suddenly, I wanted to put out the candles and climb back into my bunk. Mab was right. Humans were not meant to meddle with magic. I reached toward the candles.

Mab handed me his question. It was one he had asked earlier. After our recent spat, I was hesitant to disappoint him. I glanced up at the brass clock. It read five minutes to midnight. What could another five minutes hurt? I read the question aloud.

“Where did Ferdinand Di Napoli emerge from Hell into the daylit world?”

The planchette hesitated for a long time. Finally, it began moving slowly across the board, spelling out:

“E-L-G-I-N—I-L.”

I stifled a gasp, but Mephisto was not so reserved. He blurted out: “Isn’t that where Gregor is buried?”

The planchette began moving, jerking and pausing about the Ouija board. Like children listening to a ghost story, we awaited its answer; our breath held, the hair on the nape of our necks rising as the planchette spelled out:

“N-O—L-O-N-G-E-R.”

A candle flickered out; smoke rose from its dead wick like a ghostly rope. Mab leapt to his feet, gripping his trusty lead pipe, a finger pressed against his lips. He stood alert and motionless, slowly slipping his free hand in the pocket of his trench coat. Spinning, he threw a handful of table salt toward the port stern.

There was a screech, and a high-pitched voice issued from the back of the cabin, crying out: “
Fools! A curse upon the Family Prospero! By Twelfth Night, your doom shall be sealed. I go now to fetch my masters, the Three Shadowed Ones!
”

“Wait! I compel . . . Darn, it’s gone!” Mab struck the table with his fist.

The flame atop the candle in the far corner, by Mephisto, leapt from its taper. It ignited the curtain beside Mephisto’s bunk. Mephisto screamed and scrambled backwards. I grabbed for my flute, but could not think of any use I could put it to in this enclosed space.

“Where’s the fire extinguisher?” cried Mab.

COUGHING
and panting, we spilled out onto the deck. The smell of smoke clung to our clothes. Foam whitened Mab’s hair and clung to his eyebrows.

“Next time, I use the extinguisher, not Rabbit-for-Brains, here,” he growled, mopping his face.

“Sorry!” Mephisto still held the red fire extinguisher in his hand. He did not look the least bit repentant. “But I did stop the fire. That was good, right?”

“Darn that spirit!” Mab pounded his fist into his palm. “I would have liked an opportunity to get an explanation of that last Ouija board comment. What did that mean: ‘No longer’?”

I would have replied, but the purr of a motorboat behind us distracted me.

“That spirit! It fetched the Three Shadowed Ones!” I peered into the darkness. “Mab, get the binoculars and the starlight scope!”

Still disgruntled, Mab disappeared down the hatch, returning with the scope. Making his way to the stern, he put it to his eyes and peered at the approaching boat.

“Is it Mr. Moustache?” yelped Mephisto. “Shall I let him have it?”

“With what? Your lute?” Mab muttered under his breath. “Yep. It’s the same guy. That dratted spirit must have alerted him to our whereabouts! I see he got smart and came back with a motor this time.”

“If he’s working for our enemies, we don’t want him to catch up with us, and we certainly don’t want to lead him to my sister’s!” I started down the ladder to take a look at the charts and fetch my flute.

“What can we do to help, Ma’am?” asked Mab.

“Reef the sails, batten down the hatches, and put in your earplugs,” I replied. “We may be in for a ride!”

A LONE
motorboat sped across the black twinkling ocean. As Mab and Mephisto secured the sails, I stood by the helm, my long slim instrument poised at my lips. Softly at first, the lilting strains of the “Hall of the Mountain King” could be heard across the darkened sea. The warm night breeze stirred and tugged gently at our shortened sail. As the beat quickened, and the music grew louder, the sailcloth tightened, growing taunt. So wild and raucous grew my flute’s refrain that I had to resist throwing back my head and laughing with joy, forgetting to play.

Our sailboat surged forward. The motorboat increased its speed, attempting to intercept us. Faster and faster, my fingers flew across the flute. The winds howled, and the mast creaked. The waves grew, lifting pale-crested heads above the sable water. The motorboat leaped from one to the next, becoming airborne, then smacking down against the water. Before our path, however, where the green and red beams of our starboard and port lights fell, the sea was as smooth as glass.

Three times we pulled ahead of him, only to have him catch up again. By this time, we were quite close to our destination. If we wanted to lose him before we reached my sister’s island, we were running out of time. Sparing a second to close my eyes, I consulted my Lady as to how to escape this menace, but no reply came.

Ahead, silhouetted against the night, were several small isles barely larger than boulders. A narrow passage ran between them. We sped toward it.
Again, louder than the swelling music, came the creak of the mast. I spared it an appraising glance. Our craft was rented, and I was uncertain of its condition. I regretted not having asked Mab to reef the sails more tightly.

The isles loomed before us. I could make out three great rocks rising from the waters between them. Measuring carefully, I found a single course between two boulders where a sailboat of our size could pass. It was a narrow passage, a very narrow passage. It would be madness to navigate it in the darkness, much less at this speed.